Two Dimensional Arrays in Ruby?

No doubt this question has been asked before but I cannot find it and it is
not documented in three Ruby books I've checked, which is very strange as
two dimensional arrays are a common need in programming.

How does one define and use a two dimensional array in Ruby?

I tried
anarray = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6] [7, 8, 9]]
with
puts anarray[1][1]
does not deliver the 5 that I would expect but instead, provides (in SciTE)
the error message on the line defining the array:
>ruby test_2_dimensional_array.rb
test_2_dimensional_array.rb:1:in `[]': wrong number of arguments (3 for 2)
(ArgumentError)
from test_2_dimensional_array.rb:1
>Exit code: 1

So what is the secret for working with two dimensional arrays in Ruby? And
is it documented somewhere?

Oh, yeah. If you look up Arrays in the index of your book, on one of
the pages you will find something like this:

---
However, in Ruby specifically, arrays are ordered collection of objects.ecause everything in Ruby is an object[,] [a]rrays can contain any
combination of objects of any class.
---
p. 574 Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional

On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 10:11 PM, Mason Kelsey <> wrote:
> No doubt this question has been asked before but I cannot find it and it is
> not documented in three Ruby books I've checked, which is very strange as
> two dimensional arrays are a common need in programming.
>
> How does one define and use a two dimensional array in Ruby?
>
> I tried
> anarray = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6] [7, 8, 9]]
> with
> puts anarray[1][1]
> does not deliver the 5 that I would expect but instead, provides (in SciTE)
> the error message on the line defining the array:
> >ruby test_2_dimensional_array.rb
> test_2_dimensional_array.rb:1:in `[]': wrong number of arguments (3 for 2)
> (ArgumentError)
> from test_2_dimensional_array.rb:1
> >Exit code: 1
>
> So what is the secret for working with two dimensional arrays in Ruby? And
> is it documented somewhere?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>

Hi, Mason

In Ruby, Arrays are objects, they only have one dimension. But they can hold
anything, including other arrays, so they can behave as multi dimensional
arrays. To get your desired output, you would so something like this

In this example, we say Array.new(3) which says to make an array with three
indexes. Then we pass it a block, which determines how to initialize each
index. The block accepts the variable i, which is the index being assigned,
so it will have values 0, 1, and 2. Then for each of these indexes, we want
it to be an Array, which gets us our second dimension. So in our block we
assign another Array.new(3), to say an array with three indexes. We pass
this Array the block {|j| 3*i+j+1} so j will have values 0, 1, 2 and i will
have values 0, 1, 2. Then we multiply i by 3, because each second dimension
has three indexes, and we add 1 because we want to begin counting at 1
instead of zero.

So this says "create an array with three indexes, where each index is an
array with three indexes, whose values are 3 times the index of the 1st
dimension, plus the second dimension, plus 1"

7stud, you need not be jealous of my experience. Yes, I have learned over
100 languages and had a career of 36 years as a programmer. But only a few
of the languages I learned are still viable. Computer languages are dime a
dozen and knowledge of them has a funny way of becoming irrelevant. And age
(I'm 68) does have its own clever ways of leveling the playing field. My
eyesight was not good enough to catch such a trivial error. If I am
fortunate, then, I have helped you debug the problem you have. I wish you
the best and hope you will use your talents wisely.

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